How Many Users Does LinkedIn Have? - and Other LinkedIn Stats

Hygiene is important. Most of us brush our teeth, wash our clothes, and take regular showers as part of our daily routines.

What about our employment profile hygiene, though? Enter LinkedIn. Prior to its inception in 2003, the majority of job seekers in the world would be that guy who puts on cologne as he’s rushing out the door to cover up the fact that he didn’t have time to shower.

But in the wake of the world economic crisis a few years later, it became evident that half measures just aren’t good enough. LinkedIn statistics over the past decade or so show us that a social network used for business purposes has the potential to redefine the way we look at job applications and professional networking.

So, how many users does LinkedIn have anyway? Read on to find out!

LinkedIn Demographics

1. There are around 660 million LinkedIn members in over 200 countries across the world.

(LinkedIn) (Statista)

The number of LinkedIn users in 2019 is approaching 700 million. The platform first launched back in 2003, and reached one million users a year later. The number has been steadily growing over the last decade, with 37 million in Q1 of 2019, 277 million by Q1 of 2014 and over 600 million by the start of 2019. Although the United States has the highest LinkedIn market penetration, more than 70% of the website’s users come from outside the US.

2. With over 206 million users, Europe is the largest LinkedIn market in the world.

(LinkedIn)

If we look at LinkedIn user demographics, Europe and North America are the two most dominant markets in the world. There are over 165 million LinkedIn members in the States alone, 16 million in Canada, and 13 million in Mexico. When it comes to Europe, the UK leads with 27 million users, followed by France with 19 million and Italy with 13 million. The Asia-Pacific region is also home to a massive number of LinkedIn professionals - over 175 million in total, with 62+ million coming from India and 48 million from Mainland China. The LinkedIn user base is also very large in Brazil, whose 40 million users constitute nearly half of Latin America’s 95 million total.

3. There are currently around 310 million LinkedIn monthly active users.

(DataReportal) (SimilarWeb)

The total number of registered users on a social network platform is different than the number of people who actually make active use of the platform on a daily basis. Since LinkedIn stopped providing active-user data a while ago, Data Reportal extrapolated this information from SimilarWeb and Hootsuite LinkedIn statistics. This information is based on the number of unique monthly visits to the site. According to the LinkedIn data there, just under half of its registered users make active use of the platform each month.

This number puts LinkedIn ahead of Snapchat (294 million), Pinterest (265 million), Viber (260 million) and Discord (250 million), but far behind Instagram and WeChat (around 1 billion), FB Messenger (1.3 billion), WhatsApp (1.6 billion), Youtube (2 billion) and Facebook (nearly 2.4 billion).

4. 52% of LinkedIn users in the United States and 57% worldwide are male.

(Market.US) (Statista)

According to LinkedIn statistics from 2018, only 43% of users on the platform worldwide were women. Looking at slightly more recent stats (April 2019), the numbers are more balanced in the United States - 48% of LinkedIn members are women and 52% are men.

5. New professionals join the LinkedIn network every two seconds on average.

(LinkedIn)

According to official LinkedIn statistics for 2019, a new professional signs up for the platform every two seconds. However, on average, only around half of the registered users on LinkedIn become regular users. Still, considering that it took over a year for LinkedIn to reach its first million users back in 2004, LinkedIn trends do show that the network is becoming more and more popular around the world.

6. 57% of LinkedIn users access the platform from mobile phones.

(LinkedIn)

According to official LinkedIn statistics, more than half of its members use the site on their smartphones. According to Google, the LinkedIn mobile app has over 100 million downloads and 1.5 million ratings, averaging at 4 out of 5 stars on the Play Store.

7. 27% of the adult population in the United States has used LinkedIn at least once.

(Pew Research Center)

Pew Research’s statistics on LinkedIn found that less than a third of people older than 18 in the United States have at least some experience using the platform, whether on desktop or mobile devices. LinkedIn sits around the middle of the pack when it comes to popular social networks. It is doing better than Snapchat (24%), Twitter (22%), WhatsApp (20%) and Reddit (11%), but worse than Pinterest (28%), Instagram (37%), Facebook (69%) and YouTube (73%).

8. People aged 25-29 are the largest LinkedIn demographic in the United States.

(Pew Research Center)

Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat tend to be used by younger people (18-24) while the business-focused platform seems at home with a slightly older demographic, according to LinkedIn user statistics. 44% of people aged 25-29 and 37% of those aged 30-49 claimed to have used LinkedIn at least once.

Whether they are searching LinkedIn for companies or researching current or potential business partners, its members have different priorities compared to users of most other popular social networks.

9. 51% of LinkedIn users in the United States have a college degree or higher, and 49% earn $75,000 or more annually.

(Pew Research Center)

According to a survey by Pew Research, over half of those who use LinkedIn have at least a college degree. In comparison, only 26% of those who have finished some college education and 9% of those with a high school degree or lower answered that they have used LinkedIn at some point. A similar LinkedIn trend can be observed by looking at the average wages of people in Pew Research Center’s survey.

Nearly half of those who are familiar with LinkedIn earn $75,000 or more a year, compared to only 26% of those earning between $30,000 and $74,999 and a mere 10% of those earning under $30,000 a year.

LinkedIn Industry Statistics

10. LinkedIn earned $6.75 billion in net revenue during the fiscal year ending June 30, 2019.

(Statista) (Investopedia)

LinkedIn growth might not seem impressive if we compare it to Facebook and Amazon, but the company has been making serious financial gains during the last couple of years. June 30’s result shows a revenue boost of $1.5 billion compared to the previous year.

LinkedIn ad revenue plays a fairly small part of the company’s revenue strategy. Most of the company’s revenue comes from a program known as Talent Solutions, sold to professional employers and recruiters looking for qualified workers. The company also sells targeted ads through its Marketing Solutions program, which places sponsored content on users’ feeds. Finally, 15-20% of the platform’s revenue comes from LinkedIn premium subscriptions.

11. With the monthly traffic of over 78 billion visits, LinkedIn is the 17th most popular website in the United States as of June 2019.

(Ahrefs) (Alexa)

According to LinkedIn network statistics by Ahrefs, LinkedIn manages to rank within the top 20 most visited websites in the United States. It beats out popular sites like Google Play Store, CNN, Netflix, Quora, Etsy, Forbes, Yahoo, Paypal and Rotten Tomatoes. On the other hand, it’s beaten by Apple, Google, Instagram, Walmart, Craigslist, Ebay, Amazon, Twitter, Facebook, Wikipedia and Youtube.

12. LinkedIn was bought by Microsoft in 2016 for $26.2 billion.

(Microsoft) (Office Timeline)

By the time the company was bought by Microsoft, it had already been on the market for thirteen years. The platform was launched on May 5, 2003, and it reached its first million users within a year. The LinkedIn Business Account feature was launched in 2005, and by 2006 the site was profitable. By 2007 LinkedIn had 10 million users, and within a year it also launched a targeted advertisement program, which further boosted profitability. Within the next eight years, prior to Microsoft’s buyout, the company acquired several platforms, the largest of which was the eLearning platform Lynda for $1.5 billion. Microsoft picked up on the growing popularity of the platform, and made its acquisition in June 2016, adding it to its growing ecosystem of business-related apps.

13. LinkedIn is available in 24 languages at the moment.

(LinkedIn)

In addition to English, you can communicate on LinkedIn these days in a wide variety of languages, such as French, German, Italian, Arabic, Simplified and Traditional Chinese, Japanese, Russian, Spanish, Czech, Polish, Danish, Indonesian, Korean, Turkish, Dutch, Norwegian, Portuguese, Swedish, Romanian, Thai, Malay, and Tagalog. LinkedIn customer service is also available in all of these languages, should you need help with setting up a new LinkedIn account or troubleshooting an existing one.

14. There are more than 30 million companies with profiles on LinkedIn.

(LinkedIn)

Since the platform launched the Business Accounts feature in 2005, over 30 million companies have made a LinkedIn business profile. These pages allow companies to promote their brand on LinkedIn through a mix of helpful information regarding the business itself, targeted advertising and blog posts.

LinkedIn has gotten a reputation as the premiere B2B network, with just about every industry professional using it for distributing organic content. It’s also used to generate the majority of social network-related B2B leads in the industry. B2C companies also make good use of their LinkedIn company profiles for finding new clients.

15. LinkedIn has over 15,000 full-time employees and offices in more than 30 cities around the world.

(Instagram) (LinkedIn) (Owler) (Statista)

The nearly eighteen-year-old company has grown massively during the last seventeen years.

Today LinkedIn is run from its head office in Sunnyvale, California, but it has offices across the nation in major cities such as: Chicago, Los Angeles, New York, San Francisco and Washington D.C. In addition, major international branches can be found in Dubai, Hong Kong, London, Milan, Paris, Madrid, and Singapore.

For comparison’s sake, Facebook has over 35,000 employees, Twitter around 4,000 and Instagram only just over 400. According to the official LinkedIn blog the company is constantly expanding the scope of its operations, so we can expect further growth in 2020.

LinkedIn Usage Statistics

16. The average user spends 17 minutes a month on LinkedIn.

(LinkedIn)

Official LinkedIn profile statistics show that most people don’t spend that much time on LinkedIn. Unlike popular networks used for long chatting sessions with friends such as Facebook Messenger and WhatsApp, LinkedIn sessions tend to be brief and most interactions tend to be relatively short. It is a place to hang your online resume, browse job vacancies or check out the profile of your current, former or future colleagues or employees.

While most people are interested in how to use LinkedIn to find a job, the network has also garnered a bit of a reputation for being used as a lowkey dating site. There’s no real vetting of friend requests and people usually assume that someone is adding them out of a desire to grow their professional network. While it doesn’t seem that swatting away aspiring admirers takes too much time for the average LinkedIn user, it’s still probably one of the ways that its chat function gets used these days.

17. 64% of people in the United States were aware of LinkedIn as of February 2019.

(Statista)

LinkedIn statistics from Statista show that just over two thirds of the US population is familiar with the platform. This places it in seventh place in terms of popular social networks, ahead of WhatsApp with 54%, but behind Pinterest with 72%, Snapchat with 87%, Twitter with 92%, Instagram with 93% and Facebook with 96%.

18. 21% of users in the United States use LinkedIn at least once a day.

(Statista)

So, how often do people go on LinkedIn anyway? According to Statista, the number of LinkedIn users that make regular use of the platform is much smaller than that of competing social networks such as Facebook and Instagram. 12% of LinkedIn members visit the site on a daily basis, and another 9% do so more than once a day. Compare this to Facebook - 21% of users visit daily and another 52% visit several times a day. Or Instagram - 22% of people make daily visits and 37% are active several times a day.

Nevertheless, LinkedIn isn’t really a platform for active socialising. Once you set up your profile, your active usage won’t be nearly as frequent as that of social networks focused on daily communication. The same survey found that 42% of LinkedIn professionals update their profile on a regular basis.

19. 33% of LinkedIn users are using one of its premium plans.

(Linkedinformed)

LinkedIn paid accounts are an important part of the company’s revenue. If you were wondering how many people on LinkedIn pay for extra services, over a third of the member base is subscribed to one of the plans. These are specifically tailored to sales professionals, talent recruiters, job seekers and companies looking to expand their customer outreach. LinkedIn often offers free trials of its premium services, so it’s easy to sign up and find out whether the perks are worth the monthly premium. Besides, you can cancel at anytime, so a short-term investment may well pay off. You can always easily revert back to the standard free service by cancelling your monthly subscription before the next billing date.

20. 32.7% of LinkedIn members primarily use the platform for professional networking.

(Medium)

Medium’s LinkedIn profile stats reveal that over one-third of survey respondents claim professional networking as their main motivation for using the platform. LinkedIn recruiting statistics show that another 19.9% of its users do headhunting for candidates or search for employers.

In addition to LinkedIn people search, around 12.8% of the network’s members also dabble in lead generation and the same amount read the latest updates on their feeds. 11.8% of respondents said they use LinkedIn to get inspired and another 9.9% see its primary use in sharing useful content with friends.

21. 60% of people on LinkedIn have “All Star” rated professional profiles.

(Power Formula)

When it comes to LinkedIn profile stats, PowerFormula found that most people on LinkedIn take the presentation of their personal account very seriously. LinkedIn grades each profile on how well it is filled out and presented, i.e. how much information relevant to potential employers can be found on it. 3% of people in PowerFormula’s study said that LinkedIn gave them a “Beginner” profile strength, 6% mentioned “Intermediate,” 7% “Advanced,” 13% “Expert” and a massive 60% “All Star” - the best achievable ranking on LinkedIn. Another 11% said that they don’t know, which likely means that they didn’t care enough to fill out their profile in as much detail as “All Star” level would require. Still, the majority of LinkedIn members clearly put great emphasis on making the most of their profile.

22. The majority of LinkedIn professionals (36%) have joined between one and nine groups on the network.

(Power Formula)

According to the latest group statistics on LinkedIn, 36% of users have joined between one and nine groups. 18% of users said that they have joined anywhere from 10 to 19 groups, 9% mentioned 20-29, 15% 30-49, and a rather large 16% said that they are in more than 50 but less than 100 groups. 1% mentioned 100, 3% said that they were unsure and only 2% said that they weren’t contributing to LinkedIn group statistics at all, and don’t belong to any groups whatsoever.

23. Women are 20% less likely to apply for jobs on LinkedIn compared to men, but 16% more likely to get hired after applying for a job.

(LinkedIn)

When it comes to LinkedIn usage statistics, there are some important differences to note between men and women. According to LinkedIn Gender Insights, women are more thorough job applicants than men. The paper refers to an earlier study which shows that women generally tend to apply only when they are sure they meet 100% of the job’s requirements. This is in stark contrast with men, who often apply when they meet at least two-thirds of the requirements, roughly. What this means is that women apply for 20% fewer jobs than men and are 16% less likely to apply for a job after viewing it than men are. However, once they have applied, they are  16% more likely to get hired, and 18% more in the case of senior roles.

24. Job salary and benefits are more important for women (68%) than men (58%) when applying for a job on LinkedIn.

(LinkedIn)

According to LinkedIn statistics  gathered by Gender Insights, men and women generally agree that job salary and benefits are important to consider when applying for a job. Nevertheless with 68%, these categories were listed more important for women than men.Another factor that was mentioned by 57% of women vs 56% of men was having the necessary qualifications.

Day to day tasks that were part of the role were a factor for 50% of women and 41% of men, while company culture was of interest for 31% of men and 32% of the women interviewed. The only thing that men considered more important than women were long-term career opportunities provided by the job posting. 34% of men and only 28% said that it was an important consideration when picking a job to apply for.

25. “Specialized” was the most common LinkedIn buzzword in the United States in 2018.

(LinkedIn)

LinkedIn likes to gather popular words that show up on people’s profiles each year. The largest number of LinkedIn users in 2018 used the adjectives “specialized,” “experienced,” and “skilled,” while “leadership” and “expert” were popular nouns. Other popular words used on people’s profiles include passionate, motivated, creative, strategic and successful. In general, it’s clear that people tend to emphasize experience, motivation and expertise in their field of work.

26. “Who viewed your profile” was the most commonly praised LinkedIn feature by 72% of users on the network.

(Power Formula)

When it comes to helpful features, LinkedIn users praised “Who viewed your profile” ahead of the option to review other people’s profiles before, during or after a meeting (62%). The “People you may know” suggestion for new contacts was very helpful for 56% of LinkedIn users, while roughly half of them found direct messaging to first level contacts a feature they couldn’t do without. Advanced search and commenting/liking was less popular at 45% and 44% respectively, revealing that LinkedIn users are generally not as active on the platform as people on Facebook or Instagram.

LinkedIn Marketing Statistics

27. 95% of B2B professionals in North America use LinkedIn to distribute organic content while 76% use it for paid content distribution.

(Statista)

According to Statista’s B2B LinkedIn statistics, business-to-business professionals find LinkedIn to be an indispensable tool. Compared to other social networks, LinkedIn is more successful as a platform for both organic and paid content.

For example, Facebook was used by 83% of B2B marketers for distributing organic content and 66% for distributing paid content. Twitter had an 86%; 29% split in favor of organic content while Instagram was at 46% and 17%. Finally, only 11% of B2B professionals used YouTube for distributing paid content, while 53% posted organic marketing content there.

28. 80% of social media B2B leads are generated through LinkedIn.

(LinkedIn)

According to LinkedIn advertising statistics, four-fifths of all social media B2B leads are created through LinkedIn, making it a hugely dominant force in B2B lead generation. For reference, its main competitors Twitter and Facebook account for barely over 19% put together, with Twitter contributing 12.73% and Facebook only 6.73%. Finally, the list also includes a minor contribution from Google+ at 0.21%.

29. 51% of B2C companies have acquired a customer through LinkedIn.

(LinkedIn)

Here are some interesting LinkedIn statistics for businesses. According to a survey conducted by the company, more than half of B2C enterprises have gotten customers through LinkedIn. Additionally, LinkedIn is responsible for 64% of all social media-initiated visits to corporate websites and half of all people interviewed said that they are more likely to buy something from a company that they engaged with on LinkedIn. In other words, while B2B might be the primary domain that LinkedIn dominates these days, it can be very beneficial for B2C companies as well.

30. 11% of LinkedIn’s audience can be reached with targeted advertising.

(We Are Social)

According to We Are Social’s research from April 2019, this represents a quarterly increase of 1.7%. The largest advertising demographic on LinkedIn is young people (18-24), who account for nearly a quarter of the total advertising audience on the platform. Those using LinkedIn for marketing purposes should also take note of the gender distribution when it comes to the advertising public: 57% of those who can be reached with targeted advertising are men, while only 43% are women.